Emsland is a district in Lower
Saxony, Germany.
It is bounded by (from the north
and clockwise) the
districts of Leer, Cloppenburg
and Osnabrück, the state of
North Rhine-Westphalia (district
of Steinfurt), the district
of Bentheim and the Netherlands.

History
For a long time the Emsland was
extremely sparsely populated,
due to the fens on both sides
of the river.
Small villages were established
in medieval times
along the river and on the Hümmling.
In the 13th century the bishops
of Münster gained
control over the region; the
Emsland remained property
of the bishop until 1803, when the
clerical states were dissolved.
It came under Prussian rule, but
after the Napoleonic Wars the
Congress of Vienna decided to
hand the territory over to
the kingdom of Hanover.
It was now called the duchy of
Arenberg-Meppen.
When Hanover was annexed
by Prussia (1866),
the dukes were deposed
soon after.

The now Prussian province
of Hanover was subdivided
into districts in 1885; four
districts were established
on the territory of what
is now the Emsland.
The districts were merged in 1977 to
form the present district.

In 1950 a governmental plan for the
development of Emsland was adopted.
It should turn the region into
an industrial location. This was made by draining the
fens and establishing projects

like the test track of the
maglev "Transrapid"
or several large shipyards
in Papenburg.
Although Emsland lost much of
its original character, some areas
could retain their naturalness,
for example the Hümmling.

Geography
The district is located on the Dutch border.
It is named after the Ems river, which crosses
the region from south to north.
It is an absolutely plain countryside,
which was once full of fens.
The only elevations are in the Hümmling, which
is a hilly forest area east of the Ems.

September 22, 2006 accident
Wikinews has news related to:
Transrapid collision in Germany kills 23
On September 22, 2006 an elevated Transrapid
train collided with a maintenance vehicle
on a test run at 170 kilometres per hour in
Lathen (Lower Saxony / north-western Germany).
The train did not derail.
The maintenance vehicle destroyed the first
section of the train, and came to
rest on its roof.
This was the first major accident
involving a Transrapid train.
Most of the passengers were in the first
of the three sections of the Transrapid.
The news media is reporting 23 fatalities
and several severely injured after end of
salvage work, these being the first
ever fatalities on any maglev.

There were two men on the
maintenance vehicle.
They saw the train approaching and
jumped to the ground.
This was four or five metres
down - a minor fall.
The passengers on the train had no
way to escape, and those that
survived were evacuated
by emergency personnel.

The accident is reported to have
been caused by a combination of
human error and a technical flaw.
The maintenance vehicle carried
out routine sweeps of the track
to remove debris, fallen branches,
etc. and is supposed to report back
to the control centre via voice
radio once it has cleared the track.
Control personnel should not allow
the main train to depart the station
before the maintenance vehicle has
cleared, but it appears that they
failed to check the maintenance
vehicle's position before the
Transrapid vehicle departed.

The compounding technical flaw
was that although Transrapid
vehicles on the guideway are
automatically tracked and
controlled by the OCS, the
maintenance vehicle did not operate
in the same way and thus was not
known to the computerized
control system.
Had the maintenance vehicle reported
its position electronically as all
Transrapid trains do, redundant
computerized safety systems would
never have allowed the
passenger vehicle to approach.

The test track in Lathen is very simple.
It consists of a main track and a
single station with a side track.
When you are in the station, it is
easy to see whether the maintenance
vehicle is somewhere on the track:
if it is not parked in the station,
it must be somewhere else.

The accident had also alarmed Shanghai,
China, which also have their maglev
train facilities built by Transrapid.

For a more information about
Emsland see Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hui Chin and I sped across Hungary, Austria and Germany from Budapest
to Lathen to look at and ride the German Transrapid at Lathen, in Emsland,
north-east Germany, near the Dutch border, in late April 2005.

Lathen is a very pleasant little town and does have the
Transrapid workshop and test track just
outside (About 5 km), town.